This Friday, the Portuguese government demanded from the Venezuelan authorities “the immediate and unconditional release of Williams Davila Barrios, an opposition politician and former governor of the state of Merida, who holds Portuguese citizenship.”
In a statement on the social network “X”, the Portuguese Foreign Minister said that “Portugal insists on the release of detained political opponents, guarantees of freedom of political expression and democratic transparency, in close contact with the states of the region and with EU partners.”
In the text, Paulo Rangel claims that Davila Barrios was detained on Thursday “arbitrarily and in poor health.”
On Friday afternoon, the Secretary of State for Portuguese Communities informed Luce that two Portuguese of Venezuelan origin were detained in Venezuela due to their participation in demonstrations against Nicolás Maduro, and the Portuguese government was following the case.
They are a man and a woman who were arrested this week while engaging in activities that “the regime considers illegal,” Jose Cesario said.
The detainees are of Venezuelan and Portuguese nationality and are currently the only detainees known to the government. Meanwhile, a family source told Lusa that another Portuguese of Venezuelan origin has been arrested, a young man who is being held at a police station in the city of Puerto Cabello, Carabobo state (centre-north of the country), after being caught by police along with others during a peaceful demonstration against the results of the presidential elections on July 28.
Venezuela, a country with a significant community of Portuguese and Portuguese-descendants, is in the midst of an electoral crisis after the National Electoral Council (CNE) credited Maduro with just over 51% of the vote, while the opposition claims its candidate, former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, received nearly 70%.
The Venezuelan opposition and several countries in the international community have condemned the election fraud and demanded that the voting records be made available for independent verification, which the CNE says is impossible due to the “cyber attack” that it was allegedly aimed at.
The election results were contested in the streets, demonstrations were suppressed by security forces, and there were nearly 2,000 arrests and more than two dozen deaths.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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